A drumming blog written by Todd Bishop.
Continuing this project, here are the 49th-54th choruses of Elvin Jones's playing on Chasin' the Trane, from John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard. Transcription begins at 9:20 in the recording.
I see there's a typo— it says part 8 when it should say part 9. I'll correct that whenever I get around to it.
When in doubt, keep doing what you're doing. Let's actually continue and complete my beginning of the year project, transcribing all of Elvin Jones's playing on John Coltrane's Chasin' the Train, from the Live At The Village Vanguard record. I think I got demoralized when I completed part 8 and realized I was only about halfway done.
These are the 43rd-48th choruses of the performance— 8:10 to 9:20 in the recording. I have part 9 on deck, and then I'll only have six more installments to complete. Then some kind of analysis will be in order.
There is a lot of repetition— how can there not be? It will be interesting to see what this all boils down to, in terms of total actual content, when this is complete.
I'm finally half done with this. This project is definitely streamlining my transcription methods. I use the program Transcribe, and loop two measures at a time, usually starting with the playback speed at 75%. Everything is basically audible on this track, and I haven't had to mess with the EQ.
Because I'm using Finale, I first sketch in the combined rhythm for the full drum set— I'll put in the first sound I hear on every note of the combined rhythm. Cymbal, snare, whatever. Then I'll use the speedy entry tool to fill in everything else that's happening in the measure, using the keyboard. It's a pain poking around adding a lot of notes with the mouse. Then I add all of the articulations— accents, ghost notes, open hihat and whatnot. Finally, once I've completed a twelve measure chorus, I'll go back and loop the entire chorus and listen for mistakes in all four parts— cymbal, snare, bass, hihat. It's easy to miss things at the beginning/end of each two measure portion you looped.
So here is part 7, minutes 7:00-8:10, the 37th-42nd choruses of Elvin Jones playing Chasin' the Trane, from John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard:
Things are getting slightly wilder; there are a couple of big fills, and a couple big accent passages. We're seeing more tied notes on the cymbals, more activity with unisons between the snare and bass, more multiple triplet rate notes played with the left hand. That thing with the bass drum in the middle of the triplet was no fluke, because we see it several times here. Lots of hihat on the & of 1/3, as well. Often the execution of those is slightly fluffy, with the hihat slightly late, so it's landing between the & and the following downbeat. I hope it's obvious what to do with the big 16th note fill in the second page— you don't play exactly what I wrote, you play the idea. Obviously he's playing in a kinetic kind of way, and every single note of the idea didn't connect with the drums.
Through all of this the tempo is holding steady— maybe it picked up a few BPM, or maybe it's just a sampling error. I'm just letting the software tell me the tempo, based on my markers.
Part 6 of the Chasin' the Trane transcription project. Elvin Jones playing on that eternal classic track from John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard. My head isn't fully back into this series, so I don't have a lot to say about it. Perhaps we're getting a little bit wilder, seeing more triplets? The transcription runs from 5:49-7:00, so we're nearing ~45% completion.
Keep an eye out for the the bass drum in the middle of the triplet lick— it happens several times. See how much of what follows it is similar, or the same. It's not like it's a major lick, it's just a little emergent pattern of the kind that develops when you play a lot.
Here is part 5 of this transcription— the 25th-30th choruses of Elvin Jones playing Chasin' the Trane, from John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard. The transcription begins at 4:38 in the track. We're nearing 1/3 of the way through.
We're seeing more of the same basic things, with a few more notes here and there that don't transcribe real well. I'm noticing lots of accents on the & of 1/& of 4 in the same measure, often in the third measure of a phrase. The tempo has apparently picked up a little bit, to around quarter note = 244.
Happy actual new year, everyone. Here are the 19th-24th choruses of the ongoing Elvin Jones / Chasin' the Trane transcription project. We're about 25% of the way through.
Not a lot new to report— there's a distinct ongoing vibe here, with not a huge amount of variety. At some point I'll do a little analysis to find any patterns in his phrasing. We're seeing lots of the regular cymbal rhythm (usually a strong accent on the &s), hihat on 2/4, snare drum on the &s with dramatically varying dynamics. There are occasional repeating three-beat patterns the resolve within two measures. He's not outlining the blues form particularly strongly. In the fourth minute of the piece the tempo is holding steady and solid at ~237.
We are seeing more 16th notes, and more unisons between the snare and bass drums. And three notes in a row at a triplet rate. He's really dancing with his left hand. Note the bigger phrase-ending licks in measures 240 and 276.
Third minute of Elvin Jones playing Chasin' the Trane, from John Coltrane Live at The Village Vanguard. The 13th-18th 12-bar choruses. I just noticed that the tempo— around quarter note = 235— is about the same as another famous Elvin track, Passion Dance, from McCoy Tyner's The Real McCoy. So this is now officially Elvin's tempo around here— like 286 belongs to Roy Haynes.
This time I'm noticing he plays the snare drum on all of the &s in a lot of measures.
Also look at the triplet in measure 177— throughout the transcription there are a number of SD/BD unisons on &s that are almost that— they flam slightly, with the bass drum landing a little early. At this tempo there's only the slightest difference between a flammy unison on a swing &, vs. just playing a complete triplet.
Happy Saturnalia everyone— although it seems a shame to call it that, with everyone celebrating in isolation. Nevertheless, here is the second minute of Elvin Jones playing Chasin' the Trane— 1:13 to 2:13— from John Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard. Only fourteen more of these to go if I'm going to complete it.
The hihat is a little bit looser through this section— seemingly a fair amount of loose, semi-controlled activity. Also noting a repeating SBBS pattern reminiscent of a thing inspired last year by John Riley— “that, with interruptions.” Also take a look at measures 95-96 for a repeating 3/8 pattern, BSS, with some unexpected accents.
On some of the phrases where there is no bass drum written, it almost sounds as if he is feathering time on it, but I wasn't sure. I can't recall ever seeing or hearing him do that, although he seems to play a lot of semi-audible stuff on it. Let us know in the comments if you've ever seen Elvin feather quarter notes on the bass drum at bright tempos.
Ending a truly bleak, shameful year— and four years— in United States history, with an ambitious transcribing project. A little act of penance, devotion, purging, re-centering. I'm hoping to clean myself a little with this.
Elvin Jones was one of the supreme artists on our instrument, and one of a handful of creators I basically regard as religious figures. The project is to transcribe his complete >16 minute performance on Chasin' the Trane, the modern epic from John Coltrane's album Live at the Village Vanguard. In the end it should be over 30 pages long. I don't know if anyone will do anything with that, it doesn't matter. Hopefully the only thing that will stop me from completing it is if I hit a lot of untrancribable things as I get deeper in.
I have a lot of history with this record. When I was living in Los Angeles, working for a messenger service, for about four months I had four cassettes in the car. Two of them Coltrane Live at the Village Vanguard, and Coltrane Live at Birdland, and I would just cycle them for 6-8 hours a day. This tune especially I would rewind and play over and over.
There was originally some critical controversy with this album— stunningly. Some critics famously called what Coltrane was doing at this time “anti-jazz.” This track was considered to be particularly offensive in that respect. Here's a sample of that from a Downbeat column from 1962, in which Coltrane and Eric Dolphy were interrogated on their creative direction. Hoping to learn something, I dug this out of the stacks at the University of Oregon library, now you can just read it online:
“At Hollywood’s Renaissance Club recently, I listened to a horrifying demonstration of what appears to be a growing anti-jazz trend exemplified by these foremost proponents [John Coltrane and Eric Dolphy] of what is termed avant-garde music.
“I heard a good rhythm section… go to waste behind the nihilistic exercises of the two horns.… Coltrane and Dolphy seem intent on deliberately destroying [swing].… They seem bent on pursuing an anarchistic course in their music that can but be termed anti-jazz.”
It turns out that what critics say about music is not very enlightening for people trying to learn how to play it. Or for anyone.
With that, here are the first six choruses of Elvin Jones's playing on Chasin' the Trane— about one minute, 14 seconds. The tune is a 12-bar blues, and the tempo is about quarter note = 235.
There are a lot of ghosted notes here that are really hard to pick out listening at normal speed— I think I was able to get a pretty complete picture of what he was doing on the snare drum. Not so much with the bass drum— I think he's probably doing more than what I've written, but I could only get shadows of it. All the parts resolve pretty well as intentionally played notes. A lot of times there will be accidental/automatic notes sounding that don't really make sense as anything you would play on purpose.
Generally the timing is pretty accurate. There are quite a few bass drum accents on a downbeat, with a ghosted note on the & before it— that note is usually played very tight to the main note, closer than an ordinary swing 8th note. The only place where I had to compromise a little bit was in the very last measure; Elvin is flailing it in there, you probably should too.
